Heart of Midnight, page 5
Ziya opened her mouth like she wanted to argue with me and take offense, but the other people in the room nodded approvingly. I smiled.
The smile probably made my cheek and eye look even worse, but I didn’t care. I made my point to the one person in here who needed to understand it.
All of them knew what I did when the Corvids came. All of them knew that my knife thrown at the raven bitch was more than an idle threat. Now, Ziya knew I was making the same kind of warning to her.
If she wanted to side with Corvid in the coming conflict, I would make sure that she saw one of my blades. Up close.
“Well, maybe we can take it easy on the training until you are fully recovered,” Tristan said, still looking worried.
There was no point in arguing with him, even while Ziya tried to bring him into a conversation in her whispered tones to block us all out.
He turned further toward her, and an odd panic ran through me.
Was she the reason he asked us all to leave?
Was she the one he wanted to stay?
Was he going to marry the Amethyst snake?
My breathing was too fast and too hard. It sent pain flaring up in my abdomen until I closed my eyes, and I focused long enough to stop the fear coursing through me.
Somehow, I needed to find a way to stop them, to stop her from pulling him in, from convincing him to give Onyx a purple-haired, slave-trading queen, and to stop him from falling in love with a snake.
But…how did anyone stop someone from falling in love?
I looked around as I ate, trying to tell if I was the only one concerned by what was happening at the head of the table.
None of the others seemed to pay much attention to it.
To the flirting and the shameless, false coquettishness.
My food, the bite in my mouth, turned from fluffy, sweet bread to thick, dry paste as I watched them.
Ziya reached out her dainty hand again to touch Tristan on the arm, but he moved. It was a swift and seamless movement covered by an adjustment to the napkin in his lap while leaning back in his seat.
When he looked up, his eyes found mine already on him, and his smile softened into something that looked more real.
But it was all a lie. And I needed to remember that it was, no matter how much the thought of it being real made my breath come easier, and the flavor return to my food.
Tristan cleared his throat and put his napkin on the table, a movement that signaled what he was about to do.
It gave me enough time to do the same and prepare to stand, which I still wasn’t as swift at as before.
Once we were all on our feet, Tristan tipped his head to us.
“Excuse me, and please, enjoy the rest of your meal. I hope that soon I will see you again between all my duties.” He smiled and looked around at us, lingering on me for an extra moment before he turned and walked out.
As soon as he was gone, the door shut behind him, I tipped my head to the others, and left the room via the main doorway.
General Pace followed in my wake, not bothering to hurry as she caught up to me easily on the stairs.
I needed to finish my meal, but I didn’t want to do it in front of the snake without Tristan as a buffer between us forcing me not to kill her and forcing her not to say anything too likely to make me. Even in my current state, I could still kill, and would have if she said the wrong thing. A fork was an easy and efficient way to open a jugular.
“Do we have to keep going to those damn brunches?” I asked, my voice thin as I took the last step up into the hallway, the muscles in my stomach aching.
“Unfortunately, even as a queen, you won’t be able to get away from all the people you don’t like,” General Pace said, and I laughed the half laugh I limited myself to since a full one hurt too much.
“And that is one more reason,” I said, although I left out the ‘I would make a shit queen’ part of the sentence.
“Wrong.” General Pace shook her head.
“Not wrong. We should have all picked a different Onyxian potential to back. Including me.”
“Listen, Lady Cinder,” the General said, grabbing my arm to force me to stop and turn toward her, her voice low and dangerous, “King Tristan makes the choice. And you’re the right one. I don’t want to hear this from you anymore.”
I nodded and she let me go.
We walked the rest of the way to my rooms, and I didn’t say anything else.
My nod wasn’t because I agreed with her. I still knew she was wrong. My nod was because I understood that I needed to keep it to myself.
Once I was inside my apartment with the General on the other side of the door, I was able to slump, which was still more comfortable.
Gus and Jacquetta were nowhere to be found. Maybe they had another brunch with the Ladies in Waiting.
At least it gave me time to set it all aside—the hopes that I would be able to get them all to agree with me, and help me come up with a plan. They weren’t going to do that. None of them were.
In this, the attempt to save the kingdom from me as queen, and from a snake with power, I was on my own.
Not exactly a foreign concept in my life.
I filled out my order for food to be brought up. Sending it off, a yawn cracked my jaw, leaving me whimpering and bent against the table.
Behind me, the door opened, and footsteps thundered across the room to me, wrapping me in arms of heat and tenderness.
“Shhh,” Tristan mumbled. “It’s okay, Cinder. Let me help. Anything. Was brunch too much?”
“No, no, I’m fine,” I said, my voice sharp, but it didn’t matter how much I wanted to push him away, I clung to him instead, leaning my damaged eye against his chest.
The heat of him, that strange artifact of his heritage everyone had wrong and probably led to the Dragon King legend, eased the ache in my face that reached so deep into my mind.
“Eventually, I’m going to get you to tell me how this happened.”
“I already did.”
But as he ran a hand along my back, and kissed the top of my head, he made a noise that told me he knew I lied. And he wasn’t going to push.
“Do you want to go back and lay down?”
My small laugh left me groaning, and pulling him tighter against me.
“What’s funny?”
“Say that again inside your head, and tell me what innuendo you hear?”
“Oh.”
His small sound of surprise left me laughing more and taking my hand from him to press against my stomach.
“We have to stop talking. It’s hurting you.”
“I just need to wait for my food to come.”
“You did it again?” He pulled back to look at me, his eyebrows raised and amusement on his face. “You left as soon as I did even though you weren’t done eating?”
“There’s no reason to stay, especially when I don’t have to pretend that I’m using both sides of my mouth to eat when I do it here.”
His brow furrowed, and he touched that light and gentle finger to my jaw.
“But why are you pretending? There is no shame in pain.”
“You’re right. But it isn’t shame. It’s that some people see someone in pain as someone weak. And I refuse to let anyone see me as weak.” I left out that I didn’t want them to think it was a good idea to take the opportunity to stick a knife in my back.
“Pain isn’t weakness. Especially when the pain comes from being too damn strong for your own good.”
I gave him a small smile, the only kind I could manage at the moment.
“No one is ever too strong.”
His face fell, a sadness washing over him as he looked away from me to where my hand still gripped the front of his shirt, right over his heart.
“Sometimes, though, they can be.”
Chapter 11
Good Surprises
My food came and Tristan helped me bring it into my room where he set me up in my bed with pillows piled at my back.
“Are you really only eating soup and bread?” he asked, scooting the tray closer to me and handing me a spoon.
“Trust me, I wish I was better already, too.” I scooped up some of the soup with my spoon, and sipped at it before I dropped one of the rolls into the bowl to soak up some of it.
“We have to be able to find something else you can eat. Something we haven’t thought of yet. This isn’t good enough.” He shook his head, looking down at the meager spread.
He went out to the parlor and came back in moments while I focused carefully on eating.
“It’s okay,” I said, when he returned. “It’s only temporary.” I shoved the roll soaked in broth into my mouth, and scooped up some of the bits within the soup.
Of all the food I normally ate, none of it was as soft as this. It got old fast. I wanted to be able to chew again, but I wasn’t lying. This would be a short irritation.
“Yes, but…I’ll find you something.”
I smiled with half my mouth around the bite.
He smiled back, leaning on one arm as he watched me.
“Why can’t it always be like this?” he asked.
I looked around the room, trying to figure out what in the hellfire he was talking about.
“Do you mean, why can’t I always be wounded and trying to heal? Because that’s pretty terrible.”
“No.” He shook his head, laughing and sitting up to lean closer to me. “I wish we could just be able to talk openly about things, joke about things, instead of dealing with other people and all the things that go along with…” he waved a hand in the air like he was including the entire palace.
And maybe he was. Maybe he was talking about being royal.
“Most of my life I thought the same thing,” I said, looking off into the distance. “My mother used to tutor me in all the houses, all the lands and their people, their trade and their connections. I tried to ignore most of it, tried to read anything else, tried to return to the training grounds, or get back to my horse. But now,” I looked up and around me at the walls and then at him, the King. “Now I wish I paid more attention. Maybe I wouldn’t feel like I don’t belong here.”
‘Please send me away,’ I begged him in my mind.
If he did it, if it was his choice, then I wouldn’t be stuck trying to find my way through all of this. I wouldn’t have to feel like I needed to make sense out of it.
“Cinder, I know that it’s hard to feel like you belong in this mess. I think I don’t belong, and lament my place by the accident if my birth every day with every new decision I have to make. But you…” he bit his lip and breath heaved in his chest as he leaned toward me, his eyes intent on mine and his fingers threading through my own while I stiffened, “You belong…”
His voice trailed off, his fingers grew warmer still, and the door to the apartment slammed open, making him jerk back.
Tristan cleared his throat and smiled at me.
“I should go and let you get some rest. I’ll see you soon.” He kissed the top of my head, and squeezed my hand before he got up from the bed and left.
“King Tristan,” Gus and Jacquetta said from the parlor as he passed.
“Ladies, make sure she gets some sleep, okay? Thank you.”
He left the apartment, the door latching behind him. Gus and Jacquetta poured into my room seconds later.
“What was he doing in here?” Gus asked, her voice less asking and more insinuating.
“Very funny. He was helping me.” I took another bite of my food, thinking that, yes, he was trying to, at least. Even if he wasn’t actually able to do much to change the circumstances around us. He was trying.
Damn it. I shook my head, and ate another bite. This was exactly what I didn’t want to happen. I didn’t want him to make me think he wanted me here. I didn’t want any of this to make its way into my heart again.
Every bite I took, while Gus and Jacquetta told me all about their brunch, I stoked a fire around my heart, to burn away all the parts of him that made their way there, and protect myself from more.
“So, did he tell all of you?” Gus asked, and I tried to run through the words she said right before that sentence to see what I missed.
“Did he give you all a schedule with ideas?” Jacquetta asked.
“No, we don’t have a schedule, and we didn’t get any ideas.” That I could say with certainty, although I still couldn’t remember what they meant when they referred to ideas.
“He didn’t even bring it up, did he?” Gus asked, flinging her arms.
“Tristan didn’t bring up anything like it.” Since I didn’t know what ‘it’ we were talking about, I thought that was a safe thing to say.
“Well, we were told that he has a plan to spend a meal every day with one of the potentials at a time. It’s all the Ladies in Waiting can talk about,” Jacquetta said.
I wanted to laugh, thinking about Tristan actually having the time to devote to a whole formal meal with one person.
Although…he did spend almost a whole meal with me already today after the brunch. How did he find the time away from his duties for that as often as he managed? Especially now? Was he an absentee king?
“Look, she just figured out that he’s going to be spending time with the others, too,” Gus said, leaning over to Jacquetta and fake whispering.
More food in my mouth let me keep it shut as they made fun of me, missing the point entirely, and, yet, making me think.
Of all the ways I could protect the King, it wasn’t while he was spending time alone with the other potentials.
If he was going to do it, going to set out on such a terrible idea, then I was going to have to find a way to save him from himself.
How I was going to do that, I didn’t have a clue.
“Jacquetta, is there any way to get me better faster?” I asked, breaking into their conversation.
“I’ll ask Mother. She’ll know.” Jacquetta jumped up and ran into the parlor. Gus stole a piece of bread from my tray, and I slapped at her hand.
“You get enough food. This is mine.” And it was all I was able to eat.
“Cinder,” Jacquetta called from the other room as she came into the bedroom, her eyes wide, followed by a series of servers with carts piled with food.
“What is this?” I asked, leaning forward and almost spilling my soup all over the bed.
“King Tristan ordered the kitchen to send up all the things that someone could eat if they had difficulty chewing,” Jacquetta said, reading from a card before she handed it over to me.
His seal was on the bottom of it.
The food was far too much, but it all looked delicious. The servers explained to Gus and Jacquetta what each of the dishes were while I carefully climbed from the bed and looked over my gift.
Because this was a gift.
More than any stupid amount of money spent on something would have been, this would help me get better. And I wanted that more than anything else at that moment.
Although I knew it was a short piece of time before all my worries would flood back soon, the relief of real food almost made me cry.
Chapter 12
Throw Things
“It’s been three days and I’m fine,” I said, pacing back and forth in front of my open window, staring down at the maneuvers going on in the courtyard.
“You’re not fine,” Jacquetta said, hands on her hips.
“And your bruises prove it,” Gus said, shaking her head.
True, the bruises weren’t completely healed, but I felt much better. Not good enough to try and sneak out via my balcony like I had before, but they didn’t need to know that.
“Come on. If I stay in here for much longer, I’ll start using the furniture for target practice.” Especially since they stayed with me every second of the day as if they knew I was formulating plans to get out to the training grounds.
“But if we take you down there, you won’t be able to help yourself,” Jacquetta said.
“I…I’ll be fine.” Because, no, I wouldn’t be able to stop myself from training, but that wasn’t a bad thing.
“What if you make it worse, and then you’ll be stuck up here longer?” Gus asked, but there was an edge to her voice, like it was an accusation.
“Please, I need to go down there and see what they’re doing. Even if I don’t get involved at all. I need to.”
How did they not understand that this wasn’t because I was bored? The only way I knew how to heal, the only thing I knew to do when my mind was full, was train. This, being part of the preparation for the war, was good for my new mission protecting Tristan and Onyx. But it was more than that. It was a need.
Jacquetta and Gus looked at each other, having some kind of conversation with their eyes I wasn’t privy to.
But when Gus lifted a brow and pursed her lips, and Jacquetta sighed, dropping her hands to her sides, I knew.
“Thank you,” I said, running out of my room as they laughed behind me.
I didn’t change out of the dress they had me in for brunch. Instead, I grabbed my red cloak, and threw it on as I darted out the door.
At least my dress today was warm because the weather had turned completely. By the iron gray of the sky that I watched all day through my window, I guessed it was going to snow.
Down the stairs and through the grand foyer, I didn’t see a single person who wasn’t a guard or a servant.
Besides brunch, the advisors weren’t spending any time with any of us potentials, and Tristan hadn’t made another appearance since the first day. Preparation for the war was far more important to everyone than this stupid bride hunt. Which made continuing the whole thing make even less sense.
Stepping outside, the chill of the air seared into my lungs, making the twinge of ache around my middle worse for a second. But it was worth it.
The sounds of an entire regiment being put through their paces rang out across the courtyard, bouncing off the obsidian walls of the palace.
